ABSTRACT
Objective To observe brain areas activated during verb generation in Uyghur and Chinese,and thus to explore the neural mechanism of speech formation and understanding and the language barriers after brain injury and during recovery.Methods The blood oxygen level dependent contrast functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD-fMRI) was used to scan activated brain areas of 31 cases of Uyghur and 28 cases of Chinese speakers as they completed a verb generation task.Results The mainareas activated in the brains of the Chinese group were the left caudate nucleus,the left inferior occipital gyrus,the left fusiformgyrus,bilateral supplementary motor areas (BA8/6),the left BA32 area,the left precuneus,the left superior parietal lobe (BA7),the left inferior parietal lobe,the left angular gyrus,the right precentral area (BA9),the pars triangularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus,the pars opercularis of the right inferior frontal gyrus and the bilateral cerebellum.The main activated areas of the Uyghur group were the left precentral area (BA9),the pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus,the pars triangularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left cerebellum.Moreover,the Chinese group showed significantlygreater activation in left caudate body,the left orbital part of the middle frontal gyrus,the right caudate head and the bilateral anterior cingulate gyrus (BA32) compared to the Uyghur group.The Uyghur group,on the other hand,did not show activation significantly greater than that of the Chinese group in any area.Conclusions The brain areas activated when generating verbs in Uyghur and Chinese are not exactly the same-the processing of Uyghur mainly occursin the left hemisphere,while that of Chinese may need the participation of more brain areas in the right hemisphere.